The general objective of the proposed research is to compare the relative merit of a dissonance versus a self-perception approach to the study of attitude change and self-persuasion. This research may be considered as one instance of the confrontation presently emerging in social psychology between traditional drive-motivational and the more recent cognitive-attributional explanations of social behavior. The research outlined in the proposal will be conducted so that the experiments share a common methodology that seems well suited for a comparison of the two theoretical approaches. Subjects will be induced to write counter attitudinal essays and thus, freely commit themselves to a public attitudinal stance that is unambiguously inconsistent with their private attitudes. A "forced-compliance" of this nature generally produces attitude change in the direction of the subject's public advocacy. The specific variables mentioned in the proposal were selected because it can be argued that the two theories make opposing predictions regarding their effects on attitude change.